Upgrading to httpd 2.2.4 on RHEL and CentOS
January 17, 2007 by Jason · 20 Comments
Well, a new version of httpd was just released the other day. I kind of expected this to open a flood of people requesting a how-to on upgrading to the newest release of Apache's httpd 2.2.4 on RHEL & CentOS 4 and I wasn't wrong. I've had a few people searching for "apache 2.2.4" and "httpd 2.2.4" on my site search today so I figured, "Hey? Why not give the masses what they want?"
As it turns out, if you followed my how-to on upgrading to httpd 2.2.3 then this is going to be a pretty easy upgrade for you. If not, don't worry, I'm going to start including pre-modded SRPMS and occasionally complete RPMs (x86 only) at the bottom of these tutorials. That should give some of you that have had problems an easier time with the upgrade.
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Upgrading to MySQL 5.0.33 on RHEL and CentOS
January 12, 2007 by Jason · 11 Comments
If you follow the MySQL Announcement list then you already know that version 5.0.33 was just released. Unfortunately, those of you on RHEL/CentOS (and even Fedora, at least for the time being) do not have any way to install it unless you compile from the tar.gz source because MySQL has decided to only regularly release binaries to those that pay them for the Enterprise version. Compiling from source, by the way, is something that MySQL does NOT recommend that you do, even though, at current, this is the only option that they give you. Funny, isn't it?
That said, I've taken a slightly different approach to this tutorial as compared to my "Upgrade to MySQL 5.0.27" tutorial. That how-to dealt with rebuilding the src.rpm from the FC7 development tree so that it would work on RHEL & CentOS 4. This how-to uses the spec file from the official MySQL src.rpm for 5.0.27, upgrades the source to 5.0.33, and then adapts it so that it generates RH/Fedora-style RPMs for an easy upgrade.
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Run your own Home/SOHO PBX with AsteriskNOW
January 4, 2007 by Jason · 10 Comments
The second beta of AsteriskNOW was released yesterday and I just now got a chance to download and try it out. I have to say, this "beta" product looks and feels better than many commercial suites that I've tested and is definitely worth a look if you are looking for a PBX system for your home (perhaps to compliment a VoIP phone line) or office.
About 18 months ago the company I work for decided that it was time to move from having a few (4, to be exact, not counting the fax) analog phone lines to using a PBX system. At the time we did some research and eventually decided that a system that would allow us to use a mix of analog and VoIP lines was what we were looking for. Not wanting to be locked into a single hardware vendor, we decided to go with a system based on the open-source Asterisk software, specifically [email protected] (now Trixbox).
As can be gathered from the name, it was not terribly suited to business use and both systems we deployed were retired within a few months and replaced with a system from SwitchVox. While that system has a few bugs, all in all, it's a very stable platform. It's also not free (solutions start at $1000 and move up rapidly) which can be a real turn-off for a home or small office user. That's where AsteriskNOW comes in.
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“Servers” and IDE/SATA Hard Drives
December 29, 2006 by Jason · Leave a Comment
As has already been mentioned a few times, The company I work for runs quite a few vBulletin forums. As such, I spend a decent amount of time over on the vbulletin.com forums, particularly in the vBulletin Hosting Options and Server Configuration sections. Lately, however, I've noticed a disturbing trend that is really starting to bug me, especially when I see it from people who should probably know better. That trend is to spend $500+ per month on a server and then saddle it with an IDE or SATA drive (or perhaps 2 in a RAID 1 mirror if they're going "all out") because they offer "more than enough space".
When, exactly, did it become acceptable to put a drive made for light, single-user use for a few hours per day into a situation where it would be hammered by dozens, if not hundreds, of simultaneous connections from all around the planet 24/7/365? It's like buying a Ferrari minus the engine and then tossing the inline-4 from a Hyundai Accent inside.
PHP Caching and Acceleration with XCache
December 20, 2006 by Jason · 53 Comments
Anyone who runs a dedicated server for web hosting will tell you that a great way to decrease the load on your server and decrease the page load time is to use a PHP Cache such as APC or eAccelerator. While the largest noticeable improvements are for those site that receive a lot of traffic or are under heavy load, any site, large or small can see benefit from a PHP cache. That said, in addition to the two caches mentioned above, a new player has recently entered the market: XCache.
I first started using APC about 2 years ago when the load on one of my servers was high enough that it was affecting load times and was costing me user traffic. I chose APC over eAccelerator because it was a bit easier to install (at the time) and because APC had a reputation for being a bit faster than eAccelerator. Shortly there after I noticed my httpd processes segfaulting and a bit of research also showed that APC had a bit of a record for instability under heavy load. With that in mind, I took the slight performance hit and installed eAccelerator (which is still way faster than using nothing at all).
Up until today, I was still using eAccelerator on all of my servers. However, a post on the vBulletin.com forums prompted me to give XCache, the new PHP accelerator from the maker of lighttpd, a try. I've got to say, while I've only been using it for about 6 hours at this point, it blows eAccelerator out of the water, especially once you enable multiple caches (which benefits SMP systems).
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Stretching your vBulletin Servers with OpenVZ
December 13, 2006 by Jason · 3 Comments
Most of the people reading this blog are familiar with the LAMP software bundle (Linux, Apache httpd, MySQL, and one of PHP/Perl/Python). The LAMP stack on a single server is common-place on the internet today because the components are all free and work well together to provide a stable, dynamic web platform (although, interestingly enough, they were not designed to do so). Who says that it's the best way to do things though? When working with complex applications such as vBulletin, there are definite benefits to keeping things separate.
For the past 6 months or so I've been consolidating my servers (both in the office and at remote data centers) using a virtualization package called OpenVZ (the open-source branch of SWSoft's Virtuozzo). Unlike virtualization packages such as VMWare (a system emulator) or Xen (a paravirtualization system), OpenVZ does not allow you to run multiple, different operating systems. OpenVZ will allow you to run Linux on Linux and nothing more. Moreover, it is heavily biased towards RPM-based distributions, so don't plan on getting wild. That said, if you can get past those limitations, OpenVZ might just help you get more out of your existing server because unlike the alternatives, OpenVZ's operating system-level virtualization technique has almost zero performance penalty.
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Upgrading to MySQL 5.0.27 on RHEL and CentOS
December 5, 2006 by Jason · 23 Comments
One of the most common technical recommendations given on the vbulletin.com forums is to upgrade your software versions to the newest available. I've already covered how to upgrade Apache's httpd and PHP so now I'm going to explain how to upgrade your RHEL/CentOS 4 system to use MySQL 5.0.27. This is not a terribly difficult process but it is VERY time consuming. Expect to spend about 10 minutes prepping and about an hour compiling (even on a high-end box).
To start, you'll need three things. First, you're going to need 'root' access to your server. If you don't have it, even if you can build the RPMs, you won't be able to install them. Second, on most machines, you'll need to install a huge list of dependencies. Finally, you'll need the MySQL src.rpm from FC7's development tree.
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Build Your Own Home/SOHO NAS
December 4, 2006 by Jason · 17 Comments
If you're like me, you're probably got more than one computer at home. In fact, if you're like me, you've probably got a half-dozen or so. Wait, that's still not quite right, let me try one more time... If you're like me, you've got a half-dozen computers at home, running a few different operating systems, and you use them all. Yeah, that one's right.
If so, you will, no doubt, have run into the nasty little problem of keeping your files synchronized. If you keep a copy of everything on every machine then that's a huge waste of space. If you don't, you no doubt will need something from a machine that you can't easily access. You've probably thought about setting up a file server but the thought of dishing out $200 (plus hardware) for a copy of Windows isn't really appealing, nor is the thought of taking an old box lying around and installing Linux on it. Luckily, there is a solution that lies half-way in the middle. Its name is OpenFiler.
Upgrading to PHP 5.2.0 on RHEL and CentOS
November 30, 2006 by Jason · 47 Comments
With the release of an src.rpm for PHP 5.2.0 in the Fedora Core 7 development branch, I've decided to roll out PHP 5.2.0 as a test on a couple of our smaller forums that are running vBulletin 3.6.4. According to the changelog, PHP 5.2.0 has an improved memory-management system. With any luck it'll be faster than 5.1.6 and won't break anything in the process.
The procedure to build the PHP 5.2.0 RPMs for RHEL and CentOS 4 is almost identical to the one I used to install PHP 5.1.6 on RHEL and CentOS 4 so this is going to read very similarly to the original how-to. In fact, I recommend reading that post as well before you begin.
One quick warning though, PHP 5.2.0 is currently the bleeding-edge release. I do not recommend that you install it on your production servers without first testing on a development box to make sure that your applications still work as expected. I would also recommend that you build the PHP 5.1.6 RPMs as well, that way you can easily roll back if needed.
To start, you'll need three things. First, you're going to need 'root' access to your server. If you don't have it, even if you can build the RPMs, you won't be able to install them. Second, on most machines, you'll need to install a huge list of dependencies. Finally, you'll need the PHP src.rpm from FC7's development tree.
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Picking the Right Web Host
November 28, 2006 by Jason · 7 Comments
One of the first things that comes to mind when starting a new web site is "Where will I put it?" This question is easily answered in the beginning as there are thousands of cheap (and occasionally free) web hosts available that will allow you to run a small web site. As time goes on, however, it gets quite a bit more interesting as you try to find a hosting method that will suit your site but not empty your wallet.
At current, there are three main types of hosting available: shared hosting, virtual private servers (VPS), and dedicated servers. The big question is "When is it appropriate to move from one to the next?" Most people answer that question with something like, "When my site is running slowly" or, "When my host asks me to leave." Both of these answers, unfortunately, will leave you in a bad way and may cause you to lose valuable traffic. The good news is that proper planning and research upfront can really cut down on the headaches later.